When God Commands Disobedience: Political Liberalism and Unreasonable Religions

Some religiously devout individuals believe divine command can override an obligation to obey the law where the two are in conflict. At the extreme, some individuals believe that acts of violence that seek to change or punish a political community, or to prevent others from violating what they take to be God’s law, are morally justified. In the face of this apparent clash between religious and political commitments it might seem that modern versions of political morality—such as John Rawls’s political liberalism—that refuse to take a stance on controversial religious matters, or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, are beset by a particularly acute version of this problem of religious disobedience. Whilst political liberalism follows this path so as to generate wide and stable support, it raises the question of how political liberals should respond to religiously motivated non-compliance with the norms of that liberal conception of justice. This article evaluates what resources are available to political liberalism to respond to this challenge. It examines whether anti-perfectionism can be sustained in the face of those whose religious beliefs are in conflict with the law. We argue that, under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. This view takes political liberalism away from its usual ambitions, but it is a position that is both anticipated by Rawls and consistent with his view. It does, however, require that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory.     

Overlapping Consensus Thin and Thick: John Rawls and Simone Weil

John Rawls and Simone Weil presented two distinct conceptions of political justice, aimed at articulating a common ethos in an inherently heterogeneous society. The terms of the former, chiefly concerned with the distribution of primary goods, underwrite much of today's Western democracies political liberalism. The terms of the latter, chiefly concerned with the way interaction is organised in social activities in view of the body and soul's balancing pairs of needs, are less well known. We explain the sense in which the overlapping consensus in Weil's notion of political justice is “thicker”, and may thus deserve more attention – alongside that of Rawls – for substantiating a democratic ethos within political liberalism.     

Avoiding The Unavoidable? Judith Shklar’s Unwilling Search For An Overlapping Consensus

No less an authority than John Rawls identified Judith Shklar as a ‘political’ liberal. However, though their respective conceptions of political liberalism are similar in a number of important respects, Shklar emphasizes that her vision differs notably from that of Rawls. In particular, she explicitly eschews Rawls’s focus on establishing and sustaining an overlapping consensus, arguing that his belief in the possibility of securing such a consensus is naïve and, indeed, dangerous insofar as it embodies an obvious disregard for the painful lessons of history and thereby not only allows but invites the occurrence of new cruelties and horrors. Obviously, such an approach would seem to diverge dramatically from that promoted by Rawls and many other political liberals. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Shklar’s arguments and determine the validity of her claims regarding the differences between her conception and that of Rawls and, in so doing, assess the extent to which Shklar’s ‘liberalism of fear’ can be said to represent a meaningfully distinctive model of political liberalism.     

Der herrnspruch über die kirche mt 16,17—19 in der neuesten forschung

When Nordic systematic theologians ask about the possibility of doing Lutheran political ethics, the question is not - according to this article - a purely historical one. The question is rather whether Luther's political thinking can be reconstructed in such a way that it makes sense in a contemporary context. A reconstruction cannot just deal with Luther's text, but has to take into account “stations of transformation.” In this article, Søren Kierkegaard functions as one such station, and political theology of the 1970s as another. As a somewhat different position, the ethics of K. E. Løgstrup is mentioned. In the conclusion, the political liberalism of John Rawls is presented as a contemporary conception congenial with Luther's key politico-theological ideas.     

Moral Expertise?: Constitutional Narratives and Philosophical Argument

Using the bench trial of Colorado's Amendment 2 as an example, this article focuses on the more general question of expert testimony in moral philosophy. It argues that there is indeed expertise in moral philosophy but argues against admitting such expert testimony in cases dealing with what John Rawls terms "constitutional essentials" and 'matters of basic justice." Developing the idea of public reason inherent in the Rawlsian concept of political liberalism, the article argues that philosophers can and should speak out on public issues, if they do so with due respect for certain restrictions, but that they should not serve as expert witnesses on core constitutional questions, since doing so suggests that they claim a type of authority that would require fellow citizens to defer to their views. Such claims to authority in basic ethical matters threaten the mutual respect for divergent comprehensive doctrines that lies at the core of political liberalism. Philosophers have a duty to serve the public good, and they perform this service in fruitful ways. But they should refuse a public role that appears incompatible with equal respect for the committed ethical searching of their fellow citizens.     

Eliminating Terms of Confusion: Resolving the Liberal–Republican Dispute

John Rawls thinks republicanism is compatible with his political liberalism. Philip Pettit insists that the two conflict in important ways. In this paper, I make sense of this dispute by employing David Chalmers’s method of elimination to reveal the meaning underlying key terms in Rawls’s political liberalism and Pettit’s republicanism. This procedure of disambiguating terms will show how the two theories defend the same institutional arrangement on the same grounds. The procedure thus vindicates Rawls’s view of the two theories being compatible. The reason for this compatibility is that both theories are politicized—that is, they are constructed to attract the compliance of all reasonable members of a modern, pluralistic society.

     

Beyond Establishment and Separation: Political Liberalism, Religion and Democracy

Does John Rawls??s political liberalism require the institutional separation between state and religion or does it allow space for moderate forms of religious establishment? In this paper I address this question by presenting and critically evaluating Cécile Laborde??s recent claim that political liberalism is ??inconclusive about the public place of religion?? and ??indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public place of religion??. In response to Cécile Laborde, I argue that neither moderate separation nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic justice, are compatible with Rawls??s political liberalism. Furthermore, I claim that a state can ensure that both its religious and non-religious citizens enjoy a sense of self-respect and identification with their polity by leaving issues of symbolic establishment and separation open to democratic debate. I conclude that Rawls??s political liberalism transcends the standard distinction between moderate establishment and moderate separation and leaves the public place of religion open to the democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics.     

Legitimacy, Democracy and Public Justification: Rawls’ Political Liberalism Versus Gaus’ Justificatory Liberalism

Public justification-based accounts of liberal legitimacy rely on the idea that a polity’s basic structure should, in some sense, be acceptable to its citizens. In this paper I discuss the prospects of that approach through the lens of Gerald Gaus’ critique of John Rawls’ paradigmatic account of democratic public justification. I argue that Gaus does succeed in pointing out some significant problems for Rawls’ political liberalism; yet his alternative, justificatory liberalism, is not voluntaristic enough to satisfy the desiderata of a genuinely democratic theory of public justification. So I contend that—pace Gaus, but also Rawls—rather than simply amending political liberalism, the claims of justificatory liberalism bring out fatal tensions between the desiderata of any theory of liberal-democratic legitimacy through public justification.     

BEFORE THE ORIGINAL POSITION: The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls

This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical attention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls's undergraduate thesis, “A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community” (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant theology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liberalism for reasons that anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls's late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellectual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism.     

Critical remarks on Rawls's burdens of judgement

I examine the role of the burdens of judgement argument in Rawls's defence of the claim that liberalism cannot be based on a comprehensive doctrine. According to Rawls, the burdens of judgement make it very unlikely that most individuals can agree on anything more than a purely political morality. I argue that the argument does not succeed. I concentrate on the last three burdens which are specifically about problems of reaching normative agreement. Firstly, I argue that Rawls's claim that modern society inevitably gives rise to a diversity of values is not convincing since for every claim of divergence a counterclaim of convergence can be provided. Secondly, I provide examples of plausible agreement on partial comprehensive doctrines. Thirdly, I argue that liberalism must rely on at least one partial comprehensive doctrine, namely, the value of autonomous choice. I conclude that the burdens of judgement argument does not demonstrate that liberalism cannot be based on comprehensive moral foundations.     

Rawls's political postmodernism

John Rawls has recently shifted to a "freestanding" or "political" liberalism from his earlier "comprehensive" and "moral" liberalism. I argue that this move is based on several key features that make Rawlsian liberal pluralism indelibly postmodern. Two of the more obvious features are the denial of foundationalism and the rejection of a truth status for public-sphere justifications of the basic political structure. In conclusion, I suggest that a late-modern postliberalism is a viable alternative. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

POLITICAL LIBERALISM,BASIC LIBERTIES,AND LEGAL PATERNALISM

This essay argues that neutral paternalism (NP) is problematic for antiperfectionist liberal theories. Section 2 raises textual evidence that Rawlsian liberalism does not oppose and may even support NP. In section 3, I cast doubt on whether NP should have a place in political liberalism by defending a partially comprehensive conception of the good I call “moral capacity at each moment,” or MCEM, that is inconsistent with NP. I then explain why MCEM is a reasonable conception on Rawls's account of reasonableness. In section 4, I handle concerns that showing NP fails the test of Rawlsian public justification is a nonstarter since NP does not threaten any of our basic liberties. I sketch an argument that, if this is so, the burden is on political liberalism to defend its particular account of basic liberties, since MCEM is reasonable on Rawlsian grounds. More precisely, MCEM is a conception that challenges the way Rawls characterizes basic liberties; that is, his list of basic liberties should be more inclusive by political liberalism's own structural commitments, including Rawls's “liberal principle of legitimacy.” On this revised account, political liberalism can mount a strong opposition to hard legal paternalism.     

Defending a Law of Peoples: Political Liberalism and Decent Peoples

In this paper I reconstruct and defend John Rawls' The Law of Peoples, including the distinction between liberal and decent peoples. A “decent people” is defined as a people who possesses a comprehensive doctrine and uses that doctrine as the ground of political legitimacy, while liberal peoples do not possess a comprehensive doctrine. I argue that liberal and decent peoples are bound by the same normative requirements with the qualification that decent peoples accept the same normative demands when they are reasonably interpreted and from their comprehensive doctrine, not from political liberalism. Normative standards for peoples appear in a law of peoples in two places: as internal constraints carried forward from political liberalism which regulate domestic affairs and as principles derived from a second original position that provide the normative ground for a society of peoples. This first source of normative standards was unfortunately obscured in Rawls' account. I use this model to defeat the claim that Rawls has accommodated decent peoples without sufficient warrant and to argue that all reasonable citizens of both liberal and decent peoples would accept the political authority of the state as legitimate. Although my reconstruction differs from Rawls on key points, such as modifying the idea of decency and rejecting a place for decent peoples within a second original position, overall I defend the theoretical completeness of political liberalism and show how a law of peoples provides reasonable principles of international justice. This paper explores theoretical ideas I introduced in embryonic form in a paper presented at the International Conference on Human Rights: Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights, 17–18 May, 2003, Mofid University (Qom, Iran). That paper, “Political Liberalism and Religious Freedom: Asymmetrical Tolerance for Minority Comprehensive Doctrines” (forthcoming in the Proceedings of the conference), addressed specific issues related to religious toleration, but left unexplored theoretical questions regarding the status of decent peoples. I wish to thank participants in the conference for their helpful feedback on my interpretation of Rawls' international political theory, especially Jack Donnelly, Michael Freeman, Stephen Macedo, Samuel Fleishacker, Omar Dahbour, Yasien Ali Mohamed, and Saladin Meckled-Garcia. In addition, I wish to offer my sincere appreciation to the Executive Committee of the Conference and especially to Sayyed Masoud Moosavi Karimi, Nasser Elahi, and Mohammad Habibi Modjandeh.     

The Implicit Assumptions of Dividing a Cake: Political or Comprehensive?

Rawls's recent modification of his theory of justice claims that political liberalism is free-standing and falls under the category of the political. It works entirely within that domain and does not rely on anything outside it In this article I pursue the metatheoretical goal of obtaining insight into the anthropological assumptions that have remained so far unacknowledged by Rawls and critics alike. My argument is that political liberalism has a dependence on comprehensive liberalism and its conception of a self-serving subjectivity that is far more binding as well as undesirable than it has been so far acknowledged. I proceed with a heuristic approach that introduces us to the possibility that political liberalism presupposes tacitly the Occidental metanarrative of reason harnessing rampant self-interest and subordinating it to a higher-order interest. As the presuppositions of political liberalism emerge, I draw from the debate between Rawls and Habermas in order to illustrate my argument for the existence of a dependence on these presuppositions. I outline some implications of the anthropological basis of political liberalism and conclude by exemplifying them with reference to Rawls's comments on the division of a cake.     

Reflective equilibrium or evolving tradition?

This paper presents criticisms of the method for moral and political philosophy known as ‘reflective equilibrium’ (RE), or in its fuller form ‘wide reflective equilibrium’ (WRE). This negative purpose has an ulterior positive aim: to set off, by favourable contrast, an alternative approach based on analogical argument as an instrument of an evolving (liberal) tradition. WRE derives from John Rawls but has been broadly endorsed. Though a meta‐theory, it involves a certain way of construing liberalism. This essay's target is in key part that construal. It seeks an approach to moral‐political philosophy, and to liberalism in particular, that is at once rationally grounded and contextually oriented, and provides for explanation as well as justification. WRE fails on all counts, plus others. Section I presents WRE and suggests the alternative. Section II presents the critique of WRE, partly drawing on established criticisms and partly presenting new ones. Section III opposes the application suggested for WRE by (surprisingly) a critic of Rawls, M. Sandel. The preferability of the analogical alternative is demonstrated throughout.     

Justice,Political Obligation and Public Reason: Rethinking Partisanship and Political Liberalism

In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies I examine political parties and partisanship within the context of John Rawls’s (Political Liberalism, expanded edn. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005a) theory of political liberalism. I argue that parties and partisanship are vital to Rawls’s political liberalism, since they offer a distinctive and crucial contribution to the process of public justification that is central to it, which combines the articulation of public reasons with the channelling into the public political realm of the particular values and conceptions of the good emerging from parties’ specific constituencies. Furthermore, I argue, partisanship generates a special kind of political obligations, and this further contributes to state legitimacy under conditions of reasonable pluralism. In this paper, I respond to three commentators who have raised important criticisms against my argument. More specifically, Section 1 provides a response to Lea Ypi’s argument that my normative account of partisanship wrongly presupposes that existing liberal societies are reasonably just. Section 2 answers Daniel Weinstock’s concerns regarding the plausibility and internal consistency of my account of partisan political obligations. Finally, Section 3 addresses Kevin Vallier’s criticisms, which challenge my account of public reason and propose an alternative one.

     

The Implicit Argument for the Basic Liberties

Most criticism and exposition of John Rawls’s political theory has focused on his account of distributive justice rather than on his support for liberalism. Because of this, much of his argument for protecting the basic liberties remains under explained. Specifically, Rawls claims that representative citizens would agree to guarantee those social conditions necessary for the exercise and development of the two moral powers, but he does not adequately explain why protecting the basic liberties would guarantee these social conditions. This gap in his argument leads to two problems. First, the Rawlsian argument for the priority of liberty would fail if the gap could not be filled. His argument would still support the protection of individual freedoms, but these freedoms would be treated like other primary goods and regulated by the difference principle. Second, without a full argument, there is not sufficient reason to favor Rawls’s left-liberal conception of the basic liberties over a more right-leaning conception that would prioritize the protection of free-market rights. To address these two problems, this paper fills in the gap in order to better explain Rawls’s full argument for egalitarian liberalism.     

Political Liberalism and Male Supremacy

In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the ‘Deliberative Equality Argument’, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the authors contend. The second, which I call the ‘Equal Liberties Argument’, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself.     

Liberal Exclusions and Foundationalism

Certain versions of liberalism exclude from public political discussions the reasons some citizens regard as most fundamental, reasons having to do with their deepest religious, philosophical, moral or political views. This liberal exclusion of deep and deeply held reasons from political discussions has been controversial. In this article I will point out a way in which the discussion seems to presuppose a foundationalist conception of human reasoning. This is rather surprising, inasmuch as one of the foremost advocates of liberalism, John Rawls, is also known for being one of the first advocates of reflective equilibrium, which is clearly a coherentist approach to theory construction and justification. I will begin in Park I by making my charge against an almost embarrassingly crude presentation of the liberal position. Then in Part II I will leap to Rawls' version of liberalism, obviously by far the most sophisticated working out of the position, and try to see whether anything remains of my criticism.